Web Conferencing Options

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Instructors have access to a variety of tools, supported by the University for meeting with students, either in lecture format, smaller groups or even individually. All these tools are easy to use, intuitive, and free for U of G faculty, staff and students.

Options for Capturing Lectures
Features MS Teams MS Teams Live Zoom Pro Zoom Webinars WebEx Events Virtual Classroom
Max Live Participants 1,000  10,000  300+* 500/1,000* 1,000 150 
Capture/Record Lectures yes. yes. yes. yes. yes. yes.
Share a Presentation yes. yes. yes. yes. yes. yes.
Annotate Presentation yes. no. yes. yes. yes. yes.
Share/Stream Video Content yes. yes. yes. yes. yes. yes.
Whiteboard yes. no. yes. yes. yes. yes.
Public Chat yes. no. yes. yes. yes. yes.
Breakout Rooms  50 no. 100 no. 0 6
Invite External Participants yes. yes. yes. yes. yes. yes.
Q&A  no. yes. no. yes. yes. no.
Live Polling  yes. no. yes. yes. yes. no.
Web Conferencing Classroom Compatible  yes. yes. yes. yes. yes. no.
CourseLink Integration no. no. yes. no. no. yes.
Supported by CCS  CCS  OpenEd OpenEd CCS OpenEd 

Table Key: yes. = yes,  no. = no

*For an additional cost, add-ons are available for 500 and 1000 participants.

MS Teams 

Office 365 Teams is a collaboration service that provides shared conversation spaces to help teams coordinate and communicate information. Teams delivers chat-based collaboration, calling, meetings, and live events, so you can expand the audience of your meetings. 

Microsoft 365 live events bring live video streaming to a new level, encouraging connection throughout the entire engagement lifecycle with attendees before, during, and after live events. You can create a live event wherever your audience, team, or community resides, using Microsoft Stream, Teams or Yammer. Teams live events is an extension of Teams meetings, enabling users to broadcast video and meeting content to a large online audience. These are meant for one-to-many communications where the host of the event is leading the interactions and audience participation is primarily to view the content shared by host.

Resources

Zoom 

Zoom is a web-conferencing tool available to instructors for meeting virtually with larger courses, of up to 300 students, and is supported by OpenEd. Students will be able to access meetings and recordings through their CourseLink sites.

Resources

WebEx 

The Cisco WebEx web-conferencing tool is available for larger courses, of up to 1000 students, and is centrally supported by the University. Students don't have to log in to view the live stream.

Resources

Virtual Classroom

CourseLink's Virtual Classroom tool is an integrated web-conferencing tool that allows for lectures to be live-streamed for up to 150 students. For the purpose of academic continuity, hosted live online synchronous lectures take place during the regularly scheduled face-to-face time and students watch it simultaneously. While the lecture is streaming, students can use the chat function to engage in a discussion. Lectures can also be recorded from within this tool and later viewed in CourseLink for those students who could not watch them simultaneously.

Resources

Additional Resources

Resources
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Virtual Classroom 

CourseLink's Virtual Classroom tool is an integrated web-conferencing tool that allows for lectures to be live-streamed for up to 150 students. For the purpose of academic continuity, hosted live online synchronous lectures take place during the regularly scheduled face-to-face time and students watch it simultaneously. While the lecture is streaming, students can use the chat function to engage in a discussion. Lectures can also be recorded from within this tool and later viewed in CourseLink for those students who could not watch them simultaneously. 

Additional Resources


Cisco WebEx 

The Cisco WebEx web-conferencing tool is available for larger courses, of up to 1000 students, and is centrally supported by the University. Students don't have to log in to view the live stream. 

Additional Resources


Microsoft Teams 

Office 365 Teams is a collaboration service that provides shared conversation spaces to help teams coordinate and communicate information. Teams delivers chat-based collaboration, calling, meetings, and live events, so you can expand the audience of your meetings. 

Microsoft 365 live events bring live video streaming to a new level, encouraging connection throughout the entire engagement lifecycle with attendees before, during, and after live events. You can create a live event wherever your audience, team, or community resides, using Microsoft Stream, Teams or Yammer. Teams live events is an extension of Teams meetings, enabling users to broadcast video and meeting content to a large online audience. These are meant for one-to-many communications where the host of the event is leading the interactions and audience participation is primarily to view the content shared by host. 

Additional Resources